AZIMUTH REPORT - CUPBEARER Dossier 002

Bear with me on this one because it is cobbled together from a few weeks out...

CUPBEARER DOSSIER 002

Jan Buragay

    We picked back up with the players in mid-conflict with the strange masked beings on the subway platform. The two plasma-toting goons were dispatched while Beatle struggled against the red-robed masked figure who had branded If.

 If slunk up to the dying goon and tried to coax some information out of it, making it credulous (sticky). Iffemeral learned that 1) the goon's body was actually fused into the strange armored suit it was wearing, its spine growing into the circuitry in a gigeresque amalgamation, and that its life support system was failing, and it was dying, and 2) that it seemed confident it would be reborn, that its consciousness would be collected by whatever force had given it life initially. With the dying thing's instruction Iffemeral was able to access a panel on its back that administered some sort of sedative and helped it pass on peacefully.

Learning that the goons were weird biomechanical constructs, Judy jacked open the compartment of the one whose cerebro-fluid she had spattered over the floor the session previous and used her specks to hack into its residual short-term virtual memory drive. She saw strange images of a masked nun blessing the goon before it piled into a combat transport that resembled the unidentified mechs the squad had seen in Prim's footage—it seemed they belonged to the same mysterious unit that was fighting alongside the CUPBEARER unit against BEHEMOTH. Then she saw herself killing the goon mercilessly.

Stace Forand

    Meanwhile Beatle was engaged in a messy confrontation with the masked red-robed figure. Heated words were exchanged. With the assailant held fast, Beatle dangled them over the subway track as the wind of an approaching train picked up, demanding their cooperation. A crack split the mask of its brass smile and from it poured a stream of crawling insects at fire-hose intensity directly into Beatle's face, choking them. In response Beatle thrust their cyberarm into the face-wound—finding it almost seemed bigger on the inside than it appeared—until they found some strange pulsing fleshy core, which they touched. This seemed to render the being helpless and it sank into their arms (yaoi). When questioned, the dying assassin spoke cryptically about its masters—"Who sent you?" "Who sends the rain?" "The serpent swallows its own tail. None send the first serpent. The dreams you seek you may find only in the depths of the Citadel itself." It stopped speaking and died.

Following that, the crew split up. Beatle went to Iola for information while Iffemeral and Judy went to keep following the located signal of the account that uploaded the BEHEMOTH propaganda video.

Beatle milled through the regular crowd and found Iola behind the counter at her diner. 

CONTACT - IOLANTHE ARLETH 

Iola didn't expect to end up a criminal. An ex-army medic, she settled on Azimuth after being discharged with an injury, finding a job at an old butcher shop on the corner. Her bleeding heart soon had her doing favors out of the back, providing free medical services and leftover cuts to refugee families, disgruntled veterans screwed out of their pensions, gutterpunk street kid rejects, and alien exiles. By now she's built up a precarious network of interdependence on her block—along with the muscle and shrewd judgement necessary to protect it.

FAVORS: shark, splice

Iola was looking busy, tense, and tired as always, her alien frond hair a mess, her cut-up naval jacket vest stained with grease, all four arms at work. 

After exchanging pleasantries Beatle mentioned the brand that the assassin had used on Iffemeral and Iola responded with grave concern. “How long? Where is she? How fast can you get her here? I can meet you out back in 10 minutes, tops. We gotta cut it out.” She said, “I can’t believe you’re fucking with the Second Groom Thesis. Are they at least paying you well?”

Beatle (lustful of their employer Three Pisces): “it’s a particular job, for a particular employer.”

“So they’re not. Christ.”

THE HACKER'S TRAIL

    Meanwhile Judy and Iff followed the located signal to FreshDev Complex QUARD 32, a subbasement apartment beneath a robot-staffed convenience store. Inside Judy spent the rest of her kreds on a remote-controllable camera spider drone and unboxed it in the alleyway behind the building before sending it in through a ventiltion shaft. It followed the trail to a boarded-up unit where a small figure crouched in front of a terminal screen. The apartment was stark and bare except for some scattered mech parts, computer equipment, and weaponry. Against the walls were stacked twenty or thirty assault rifles. Behind a false panel at the end of the ventilation shaft, Judy's drone discovered a niche holding a valuable brick of solid aluminum. 

    With delicate manuevering Judy guided the camera drone toward the figure at the terminal and successfully acquired a full facial recognition scan without being noticed, allowing them to run the hacker's identity against the social IDplex mainframe. A blonde bowl cut with moon-shaped glasses—they were none other than Diddolis Jennix, a hotshot underworld tekker with a lengthy history of cybercrime. According to the records, Diddolis was currently being held in the depths of the Silver Citadel for questioning… but here they were, soaking up scrolling matrix-style data from their three surrounding gigamonitors in this strange basement laboratory.

    What happened next?? Find out next time on BEAM WORLD. Life has been happening and I missed a few weeks of gaming but we are locked back in for next time—stay tuned! 😎

AZIMUTH REPORT - SUMMER 3X82 - CUPBEARER Dossier 001

INTRODUCING...

    Beatle (they), a tough Onychophoran (think sea slug velvet worm alien person) bodyguard with cyberarms and a motorcycle, willing to put in the muscle to get the job done

    Judith "Judy" Catisios (she), a slimy casino-dealer-turned-troubleshooter who can't help sticking her nose where it don't belong, big square glasses and shaggy hair and a beat-up 1998 suzuki carry

    Iffemeral "If" Alzasche (she/ze/zir), an athletic dog girl tennis instructor who moonlights as a mecha pilot in the criminal underworld

    After character creation I began by reading the following intro crawl text aloud, which I composed in a fugue state while sleeping on a futon, because roleplaying games are nothing if not an exercise in inflicting the depths of your self-indulgence on your friends:

    They say the Archon Valeria was slated to marry, but on the eve of her inauguration, her groom was lost to the stars. That same night she put on her mourning veil and locked herself away behind the Godjamb. That was seventy-two years ago. Since then she's made only the most token of public appearances, a rare wave of a gloved hand from a mecha-drawn carriage to reassure her people her heart's still beating in there, always flanked by her sworn order of knightly guardians, and always hidden beneath that veil. But it's her total absence that has proven her greatest asset, letting her coast through reelection after reelection, no candidate able to mount an offensive against her sheer inertia yet. 

    It's no wonder the hands-off approach is so popular around here. The city of Azimuth—its lush, teeming canopies, its waterlogged alleyways and crowded light-rail platforms and thousands of ramshackle-stacked secondhand storefronts and cantinas and common arcades, neon-drenched nightclubs, derelict factories, sweltering, humid apartments—hell, the people of Azimuth have long since learned to fend for themselves down here. Up in the Citadel, a few hundred reps and corpos jockey for scraps of Valeria's power, funneling whatever residue they can scrape up back to their cronies before they get backstabbed or reconglomerated again, never really able to get the gendarme to back them up.   

    Down here, though? Some folks will give you the same yarn—shit and misery, nothing but money and blood. But I gotta be honest. Lately I've been feeling like it's a different story. There's something about this summer—some kind of shift in the air, I can taste it, like white wine. It's like, there's nobody holding you back. Everything is up for grabs. And if you believed everything coming out of those swampwave radio transmissions, you might even think the whole world was about to shift right out from under you, like some kind of Better Heaven was just right around the corner. 

    I gotta imagine that's why these three are here sticking their necks out now — holed up in a karaoke room at the back of the Blonde Dove, Basin District, off the TriZe Lift 90q, paying by the minute for an encrypted audience with that ghost they call Three Pisces. But I guess there's no way to know yet—only a way to find out.

 

Three Pisces contacted the crew through a hacked jukebox transmission around midnight from a karaoke room in the back of an occult dive bar called the Blonde Dove. Three Pisces' sigil emerged from the darkness and brought with it the smell of the sea, the sound of the ocean.

CONTACT - THREE PISCES:

Three Pisces (via)

No one really knows who's behind III.Pisces. People say it might be a higher-up in the planetary security complex, a corporate whistleblower dealing info on the sly, a rogue cryptovirus whose programming broke loose, or just some script kid hiding behind a web of proxies and a voice modulator. What people do know is that III.Pisces gets results. Simply paint the proper sigil in a triple-routed dark web corner of the Space and III.Pisces will pull the strings for you—that is, if you're willing to pay the price.

FAVORS: fix (illicit programs, classified documents, occult secrets), stable, shark

 

 

CUPBEARER (Jacob Earl)

The job was simple. Three Pisces was looking for the crew to retrieve a black box from an experimental mecha prototype, codename CUPBEARER. They provided detailed schematics on the model. The black box was refered to as a Memorial Drive and would be found in the nape of the neck of the war machine. The crew was told to contact Three Pisces upon its retrieval, and after the hand off they would each be paid 6 Kreds.

With the job secured the crew got down to business, revving up their vehicles and heading out for midnight rendevousz with their contacts as black rain poured down on the green neon-lit streets of Azimuth.

Beatle and Judy paid a visit to aluminum tycoon Priceless Vows, rolling up to her chataeu in the Aluminum District… while Iffemeral went down to the haunted docks along the bay to look for Kreevil Smoth.

PRIM & IMPROPER

CONTACT - PRICELESS VOWS, a.k.a. PRIM

Azimuth's premiere aluminum tycoon and heiress to a mecha industry fortune, Prim is used to getting what she wants. You'll often find her relaxing poolside on her climate-controlled chataeu's rooftop gardens, doted on by her entourage of cyborg servants and offworld concubines. Though the aluminum mines have long since dried up, Prim still holds massive sway in the star courts, and her cunning smile and deep pockets can get just about anything on or off Azimuth. 

FAVORS: stable, ride, fence

Buzzing their way through the gate, Beatle and Judy were greeted by Prim's skeletal cyborg butler Colonomus and led into the chataeu's vast immaculate plush parlor, a huge baroque couch and a roaring fireplace greeting them. Prim came down the spiral staircase, yawning, platinum hair up in curlers, and gave them what she knew. 

AGONY Ghoul (Kow Yokoyama)

The CUPBEARER mech had actually been spotted in action that same morning, and Prim had been fielding calls about it all day. Colonomus projected the grainy drone news footage into the dark parlor. 

Two mecha squads were engaged in a skirmish somewhere out in the jungle along the River Gryx. One unit was composed of a few AGONY Ghouls — mass-produced heavily-customizable four-legger light weapons platforms — led by a strange and immaculate centaur-shaped aluminum frame that danced through the air with grace and carved through the opposing squad. Zooming in on an emblem emblazoned on its shoulder depicting a bull with a banner in its mouth, Prim could give them a name: BEHEMOTH.

Mystery aluminum mech
(Bernard Chan)

They opposed a group of strange squat and tubular assault mechs, unusual models not found in public records, who provided fire support for CUPBEARER.

As the skirmish commenced, the aluminum frame carved through the opposing squad with a silver lajatang, but in approaching CUPBEARER, their tactics changed: they deployed grapple-ropes and stunning weaponry, seemingly attempting to capture it intact. CUPBEARER unhinged its jaw and unleashed a massive kinetic shockwave, sending every unit flying and cutting the camera feed as it squished the camera drone like a mosquito.

Beatle keyed into Prim's affect as she told them what she knew about BEHEMOTH — that they were some naive political group of upstart firebrands, that they were certainly doomed to failure, and no, she had no idea how they got their hands on one of her aluminum frames, and if she did she'd have already made a million off the free publicity. In between the lines—giving her the read adjective—Beatle noticed her blushing and fidgeting with her shawl, which they saw barely concealed a love bite on her neck. It seemed likely that Prim had taken a lover among their ranks, and that might have something to do with the mech, but maintaining their professional distance, neither Judy nor Beatle pushed the matter, and soon they were back out into the pouring rain.

VULTURE'S ROOST

CONTACT - KREEVIL SMOTH

Don't let that ruby red chassis fool you: KREEVIL SMÖTH isn't a top-of-the-line corporate-sponsored new model cyborg. He's an amalgamation of one-hundred-percent DIY recycled gutter trash, spruced up only by his own exquisite craftsmanship. A truly self-made man, KREEVIL knows the value of looking good, and he's renowned among Azimuth underworld for spinning gold from rusted second-hand junk. Just don't ask him where it came from.

FAVORS: chop, fix (recycled cyberware and jury-rigged weaponry), splice

Meanwhile Iffemeral consulted with KREEVIL SMOTH, a.k.a. THE VULTURE. She found one distributed consciousness-body of the ruby red cyborg in stasis in an abandoned crane box control tower office and its eyes flared to life as she approached. After passing up on an offer for a new upgraded cyberspleen, If got down to business. Iffemeral showed Kreevil some sketches ze had taken of the CUPBEARER schematics, which Kreevil recognized as an antique model that had been out of production for nearly a century. Each one had been decommissioned and its parts shipped down the river. If anyone was capable of getting an antique like that running, Kreevil said, it would be "Sister Eidi and her freaks from the Godjamb." Merely having to speak the name seemed to make the cyborg scoundrel uneasy… 

The crew reconvened at a bus stop in the Basin District around one in the morning, the night rain showing no sign of letting up. They resolved to catch up with beloved bad boy WINTER REEVES for more information on this BEHEMOTH group. Judy sent him a "wyd" text and he responded with a slew of emojis and sent his location. After a quick ride to the city's NuNEX — a massive transit center where all lines meet — they found him posted up with his boys at the back of a food court, knocking back diet soda and cough syrup.

CONTACT - WINTER REEVES

Nobody runs it like Winter Reeves. The failson scion of the corporate family behind the debunked WorldEX project, all that he knows is living large. Brought up in the corporate boardroom, he's now living out his traplord fantasies with his boys, rolling deep on the socials, amassing consumer gadgets and dubious body mods, and strengthening his undeniable pull in the local scene.

FAVORS: date, shark, deal

Winter gave Judy the "what's up big sister" treatment, his dozen wallet chains jangling, his frosted tips frosty, his fresh neck tattoo looking excellent. When Judy asked about BEHEMOTH, one of his boys showed off a darkweb viral video of a massive silhouette lurking through the midnight jungle and flipping over a humvee. At the end of the video, that same emblem appeared, the bull with the banner in its mouth, but this time in crisp high-definition. Now the writing on the banner was legible. It read: Battalion Engage! Here Ends Morbid Eternity, To Heaven!

The video was uploaded from a burner account—apparently it kept getting scrubbed off the major platforms, but it kept popping back up. Judy dove into cyberspace on her technospecks and routed the IP address GPS coordinates off the burner, giving the uploader a sticky located adjective. It had been uploaded from a newly-renovated offworld gentrification neighborhood showroom complex just a few stops north-north east on the NuNex metro called FreshDev SubBlock QUARD 33-D, and it looked like the smartphone that posted it was still there, too. The crew made haste for the subway platform.

NUNEX RED

NuNEX was still crowded, even at this time of night, by people getting off work and getting on, commuters and overnight office shifters and goth kids headed back and forth from clubs and skeletal audodroids of all kinds. As the subway arrived and the crush of bodies poured onto the platform, Iffemeral was seized by a pair of arms from the crowd, and felt sudden white hot metal pushing into her back. A masked red-robed figure commanded in her ear, "MEDDLE NOT WITH WHAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND." The white-hot iron left her branded (sticky) with a strange cybersigilist symbol.

The crew sprung into action. If dove to the floor and activated her stealth suit and combed through the crowd for more assailants, parsing two strange armored goons with bulbous glass helmets who were toting heavy plasma blasters and lighting them up on Judy's HUD. Two quick shots from Judy's stinger pistol made short work of the parsed targets, a bullet to the dome shattering glass while blue fluid drooled out onto the concrete and the subway crowd went scattering.

Meanwhile Beatle grabbed the red-robed figure and held them by the neck over the crowd, the white-hot branding iron clattering to the floor. What did they say? Tune in next time to find out!!

DREAMING A NEW VENUS: WELCOME TO AZIMUTH

Leo Fox, Prokaryote Season

WELCOME BACK GHOULS!

    It's been a hot minute. Where to begin? My life is radically different than it was last time I posted but that's not the reason we're here. We're here to upload our cosmic psychometry interiors to the arcanomainframe and jury-rig waterlogged mosses into our cranial uplinks by way of psuedomecha experimental expression systems. We're here for fucking computer games. Welcome to AZIMUTH. 

Over the past few weeks the gals and I held our first few sessions of humid hardboiled hypergothic hijinks using the beloved MECHNOIR/TECHNOIR by Jeremy Keller. We have been scheming on it for a bit! We're all a little familiar with the system it from listening to counter/weight but we're all new to playing/running it. It's got a lot going for it I'm into. 

    Months and months ago I wrote a wild DOOM-ish pulpy action move pastiche power-armored werewolf chaingun infiltration one-shot scenario that I had originally chalked up for use with FIST, which is an extremely slick little world-of-dungeons-style OSR-inspired new-school jam, the new hotness in high-octane homoerotics. FIST has a ton going for it and I still wanna play it some day—the way it marries lightweight random chargen with evocative flavorful options hits a sweet spot for me design-wise, and I'm in love with the kitchen-sink pulp scifi vibe and its role assignment system in particular. 

    That said after our run of Errant I wanted a break from running a high-character-lethality game and I grew weary of having to do things like think about numbers and roll dice for damage. And the more cyberpunk and mecha the scenario became the more that using MECHNOIR just simply made the most sense. It's a game about coming up with sweet adjectives with your friends. What's not to love. I'm also really stoked on its plot mapping system and admire the way it acknowledges that playing out conflict between characters is the juice of storygaming and gives you permission to totally ignore things like trying to describe the shape of a room.

    For this game we're returning to what I've been calling "a corner of MERIDIAN space." MERIDIAN was the setting for our beam saber campaign that ran from like 2021-2023 or something ridiculous like that that we built from the ground up using street magic. It's a place of anthropomorphized war machines, cyborgs and data ghosts, politicking duchesses, arcane ancient aliens, corporate sabotage, and grimy boots-on-the-ground autonomous communities. MERIDIAN was an icy far-flung planet dominated by an equatorial megacity and a range of offworld parties interested in its excavating the ancient technology beneath its surface. 

    One day I'll do an exhaustive lore recap for the archives. Look out for the tie-in feature film.

ENTER AZIMUTH

Guy Warley

If MERIDIAN was our system's Pluto or Uranus, I've been thinking of AZIMUTH as its Venus, in like, the '80s pulp scifi sense, a massive overgrown carboniferous jungle planet teeming with love and danger. So many seeds of influence have been planted it's hard to name them at this point. In the earliest stage I watched a heap of grotty 80s scifi and horror OVAs like Wicked City, Oedo 808, and Gunnm. I played one spectacular game of MAGNAGOTHICA: MALEGHAST and found myself returning to its illustrations a lot. I'm also really indebted to the imagination behind two spectacular comics, Daria Tessler's Cult of the Ibis and Leo Fox's Prokaryote Season, both of which are playing in an occult-y noir-inflected genre-space in unique ways that have been really influential to my daydreaming of AZIMUTH. More recently I'm into Ergo Proxy and like, listening to a lot of Evanescence. It's been a busy season over here at GHOUL HQ.

Cult of the Ibis

AZIMUTH has emerged as a grotty, built-up cyberpunk city nestled in a teeming jungle along the mouth of a river. It's got crumbling hyperspecific advanced late stage austerity capitalism and 80s anime retrofuturistic crunchy terminal aesthetics, searing green text on a black terminal background, and a whole mess of factions and ideologies. I want to make the environment play a distinct role, like the glacial wastes did for Meridian—it's oppressive, yawning, humid, waterlogged, teeming, crepuscular, never quite cut back enough to get the vines from growing back over your harbored mech's thrusters, who knows what lurking in its shadows. 

It's also goth as shit and packed with mechs.

Bernard Chan

    Geographically it's a mess of overgrown old districts, things stacked up against each other, rivulets running down apartment staircases and back doors that open into cantinas that open into holodiscos that open into crypts. Architecturally it's dominated by The Godjamb, a mile-high circuitous gate behind which looms The Silver Citaddel, the once-proud seat of the city's absent president. More on that in a bit.

With lethal quantities of daydreaming and a breezy session or two of street magic under our belt, all that remained was hashing out the ever-expanding Azimuth Transmission Master Table (which they recommend keeping to 36 entries… ha… ha ha… ), jury-rigging some vibed-out roll20 backgrounds, and chalking up some characters… and away we are! I likely won't keep session logs in as fine detail as I did for our Errant games but who knows. I'm nothing if not obsessive. Thus far we've just kicked off the initial mystery--a job concerning a lost prototype requested by the crew's shadowy handler, Three Pisces--which I'll chalk up the notes for as I prep for next session.

    That's all for now--til next time ghouls!

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 15 Bye Bye Murkvey

 This session was honestly a blur. I didn't sleep the night before and we were all kinda goofy and exhausted. We're coming up on a 3 week break and I have some new schemes in the works for after the break that had me distracted (more on those later).

I think what happened was Kestrel scattered the menacing glass spiders with a successful wager using their sword cannon to make a weird pool noodle sound that terrified them deeply. The party continued trekking through the depths -- Gemini saw some smoldering yellow eyes staring them down from the depths of a dark chasm -- until they reached the room with the King's Crown. Kestrel poked the door in and looked inside, where 7 strange pastel rubbery foot-tall men-creatures were cavorting and chanting before the Crown, which was placed atop a ramshackle pedestal of sticky crystal. 

The creatures immediately ceased and pointed at Kestrel and yelled in a strange rubbery indecipherable cadence, barring crystal fangs. Kestrel shut the door and the Company hatched a scheme. Upon reopening it Kestrel strode confidently toward the Crown and Gemini and the new slime girl deviant Thalice flanked them regally, posing as if they were their honor guard. In retrospect this was a pretty good scheme and I probably should have given them the win here, but I rolled a poor reaction on behalf of the critters and was sort of hungover and cranky so it didn't work out. A fatal call. When Kestrel lifted the crown up and placed it on their head, the creatures barred their fangs and pounced.

Kestrel slew two of the creatures handily with their hand cannon while Gemini and Thalice engaged another group of them. Three of the homunculi pounced on Kestrel and each rolled insanely well on its d4 damage die, and Kestrel was already at low health from the prism trap last session; they tore out Kestrel's robotic jugular and Kestrel died as they lived, seeking the King's Crown.

Gemini and Thalice slew several more tomb homunculi and the remaining creatures scattered, disappearing into crevices in the crystal. The party looted poor Kestrel's corpse and made for the surface with their 44,000cp worth of treasure in the massive crown, 3' in diameter, too large and heavy for any head to bear its weight.

They luckily picked their way back to the surface without issue, pushing through exhaustion, and hurrying their pace as a strange noise echoed from beneath their feet and the tomb's walls seemed to shake.

Surfacing from the tomb, they reunited with Murkvey and his goons. He asked about where Kestrel was, and if they had seen the orb of the King. Murkvey mused that at least Kestrel died doing what they loved. Slime girl claimed they had seen the orb but it was too heavy and so they had to put it back; Murkvey was whipped up into a frenzy by this and said that him and his boys were the toughest in the biz and they would happily provide the muscle to extract it. They whooped and hollered as they descended on ropes fireman-style back into the tomb, the night breeze picking up as the dying sun set red and gigantic in the west, Gemini and Thalice regaining their bearings and a mysterious stranger looming silhouetted on the horizon as the long dusk fell upon the land of deadSun -MAXIMAL-.

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 14 Prism Tomb Rising

LOOT

> Nothing!

DEVELOPMENTS

> One of the strange mummy being's phantasmal eyeballs was destroyed by Kestrel.

RECAP

On that fateful day we returned with the Company in the midst of looting crystal tombs in a vast milk-colored chamber as gigantic prisms whirred and cast blinding light from the ceiling above. Immediately Kestrel struck out westward across the center of the chamber. Upon taking a step the glittering floor tile clicked into place and a searing light struck down upon Kestrel from above. Kestrel staggered back and collapsed into the looted crystal tomb, wounded, knocked unconscious, and half of their machine-eyes completely burnt out from the searing ray. Things were not looking good for the Company. Now warmed up, the prisms overhead began to crackle and whirr at a higher frequency.

In a fit of altruism Ottavi struck out on a north/south tile path to make a beeline for the wounded Kestrel. Likewise, the tile clicked into place beneath its feet, and another searing ray shot down. In a flash of light Ottavi was reduced to ash, becoming the second adventurer entombed in the Halls of the Damned.

All were stunned by the chamber's lethality. Gemini carefully picked his way across the diagonal, previously-travelled paths to retrieve the unconscious Kestrel and slung them over their shoulder, promptly leaving the deathtrap behind.

As they departed they immediately bumped into a wandering slime girl named Thalice Churmthal, a failed town crier and 1st renown Deviant errant, who was eager to help out these poor haggard souls.

At the chamber's doorway the mummy-wizard's spectral ocular -- a phantasmal eye of cold white fire -- bobbed and gestured toward the chamber, as if to indicate their work was not yet done. Kestrel responded by wagering that they knew the forbidden art of shooting and killing ghost eye orbs with guns, which succeeded, and the orb dissipated into nothingness as a faint groan seemed to echo throughout the tomb.

The Company kept their eyes on the prize and continued south toward the object of their quest, the stashed King's Crown. At the foot of the door was a slain and moldering corpse of a greenhorn adventurer they recognized as Tubbs, a long-ago fellow traveler and member of Adipose Mab's mule train. He looked as if he was slain by a million knives, covered in many shallow cuts. The door was barred on this side as if he was trying to keep something from entering from the south. The Company mused on the foul creature they did battle with (the bearowl) in like the first session of our campaign one thousand years ago in real life. They wondered if it had perhaps left young behind, or if it had itself been the young of some even larger creature... curious...

The Company made their way south and passed through a chamber where a foul-smelling sarcophagus sat filled with dark liquid, beyond which a staircase continued upward. In the nooks and crevices of the ceiling loomed glittering webs and they heard the clacking of sharp mandibles. Five dog-sized spider-creatures seemingly woven of glass loomed on the ceiling above and appraised the Company threateningly, eyes flaring. The Company resolved to make a break for it and run beneath them their sights still on the Crown. Thus concluded the session.

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 13 Enter The Prism Tomb

This might go without saying, but for the uninitiated... spoilers for Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier abound!

LOOT

    > Tunic of blue lapis lazuli (2,00cp, 1 slot)

    > Amethyst helmet (1,000cp, 1 slot)

    > Green jade bangles (1,600cp, 1 slot)

    > 200cp worth of Mummified Disquette parts (200cp)

DEVELOPMENTS

    > The Company made the acquaintance of a gold-robed undead(?) being(?) chilling on a crystal pillar in a flooded chamber in the depths of Murkvey's Rock. 

    > The creature claimed it would deliver the the Orb of the King to the Company if they killed someone hiding within the tomb called The Sleeper. They could identify an entombed corpse as The Sleeper by the lack of purple stains upon its lips.

    > The creature seemed to control some strange phantasmal eye-orbs of neon purple flame. It sent one to accompany the Company on their errand.

RECAP

    We picked back up with the Company dusting themselves off from battle with a phantasmal revenant within Murkvey's Rock, having swung by on their way to the Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine to pick up a valuable treasure -- a King's Crown -- they had hidden their previously, during their delve months ago on behalf of Adipose Mab.

    They found themselves in a small hall with two pink Tomb Crystal coffins--one shattered and its inhabitant's remnants strewn about from their melee last session, one intact--and a towering silver statue of a warrior.

    They noticed the silver statue had an upraised hand that was crudely hacked off and deduced it likely was the work of their longtime rival, Halaena Graf, and that it was where she had found her cool sword.

    Ottavi commanded a swarm of bugs to carry its mace and smashed a hole in the second coffin's lid from a distance, saving the Company from exposure to Tomb Crystal; they did so, leaving the silver loop intact, and peered within after the dust settled, seeing nothing of obvious value on the entombed corpse. The Company left the coffin with its silver loop intact and moved on to the next chamber southwards.

    In the next chamber they found a stack of many small white coffins that had been haphazardly tossed about and a strange crawlspace in the corner, from which colorful light flashed irregularly; listening closely, Kestrel heard a strange revolving droning noise from the depths of the crawlspace. Kestrel sent their rat skeleton-bullet animal companion down the crawlspace. While they waited Gemini and Ottavi investigated one of the small coffins and found its contents delicately wound in burial silks, which they unwound carefully as they awaited the rat's return. 

 

    Inside the burial windings they found the corroded remains of some sort of copper and plastic machine emblazoned with two initials, C. D. They pocketed what remained of value in the parts.

    Kestrel's rat returned with its skeletal whiskers alert, indicating to the party that something interesting -- but partially dangerous -- lay beyond. Kestrel took the lead as the Company crawled on their bellies through the damp narrow winding corridor.

    THE MOLDERING FIGURE 

    The chamber emptied into the ceiling of a room flooded with black water, a pillar rising from the center, upon which sat a moldering gold-robed figure, which was orbited by two eye-like globes of phantasmal purple fire. As Kestrel surveyed the chamber from the narrow ledge, the crackling of the figure's ancient limbs echoed throughout as it raised its gaze to meet Kestrel.

    In a haunting wispy cadence the figure welcomed the Company, claiming it had been waiting for their inevitable return, which it had foreseen within its crystal pillar. It asked the party if they truly sought the Orb of the King, to which they said yes, hoping to avoid drawing its ire.

    The being replied that it was in possession of the the Orb of the King and it would bequeath it to the Company if they assisted with a simple favor. It mused cryptically that it was bound in disgrace due to the mockery of a foe which it called the Sleeper. It claimed that the Sleeper's disobedience brought it great dishonor and that if the Company could simply kill the Sleeper, the being would be able to give them the Orb of the King. When asking how they would find the Sleeper, the being noted that the Sleeper's lips would not appear frosted with poison as the others do. Ultimately the Company played along with the request to avoid drawing the creature's ire.

    With a gesture the being sent over one of its phantasmal orbs, claiming "its eye would light the way to their quarry", and the Company departed, crawling their way back to the tomb's halls.

ON THE HUNT

    As the Company regrouped they felt a strange sensation of a double-diamond-like shape impressed upon the darkness behind their eyes. The phantasmal eye gestured for them to continue south, and they did so, Kestrel unlocking a bronze door to another chamber where a corpse sat slumped against a further southward door. The chamber branched off to a hallway and another bronze door, which the phantasmal eye beckoned them towards further.

    As they opened the next door they found themselves nearly blinded by a large chamber filled with unnatural bright white light. Gigantic prisms clicked and hummed as they cast the light from above onto an opulent tomb of glittering crystal tilework arranged in complex geometries. Five immaculate sarcophagi sat upright along the walls.

With aplomb the Company got to work, traveling the shortest paths to the closest three sarcophagi. Ottavi and Gemini recklessly smashed the Tomb Crystal lids; Gemini advanced to Tomb Crystal poisoning level 3, his eyes clouding with tiny crystal growths, larger shoots pushing out from his flesh. Kestrel opted for a more delicate approach in faceting the face of the third sarcophagus, but the ensorcelled material cleaved unexpectedly and shattered in their face, bringing them to Tomb Crystal poisoning level 1.

Within each sarcophagus was a beautiful Empyrean youth, gaunt and green-skinned and lanky. As the Company looted their grave goods (above) they heard a skittering sound from the walls and noted glimmering cobwebs looming in the wall's crevices, the hot milk-colored prisms still whirring in the unnatural sky overhead.

deadSun -MAXIMAL- 12 A Swine of Wights and Roses

Back at it again!

Dramatis Personae

- Kestrel (they), 3rd Renown Deviant

- Gemini (he/they), 3rd Renown Violent

- Ottavi (they/it), 2nd Renown Violent

Loot + New Tools

- 1 Healer's Kit (1 slot)

- 1 Vial of Swine Sedative (1/4 slot)

- 1 occulith chip (fingernail sized, 400cp, 1/4 slot)

- 1 silver tomb ribbon (200cp, 1/4 slot)

Developments

- The Company agreed to harvest valuable cysts from the Feathered Swine to clear their debt with the Vermomancers. 

- Fearsome 'mirror men' now stalk the halls of Murkvey's Rock.

RECAP - 1st of Firstmonth, 1V39

A WHORMY OPPORTUNITY

    The Company found themselves on the first of the month in Scarlet Town, hungover and broke as shit with 7,549cp in debt to the vermomancers. The vermomancers mentioned there was a special opportunity available to clear their debt, though it was specialty work, not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. The Company considered their options--including tailing a caravan that went missing--and then resolved to meet with the vermomancers to hear them out.

    Ottavi led them back to the vermomancers' yurt complex south of Scarlet Town. Their leader, Symanthe, was overjoyed to discuss the opportunity. Over tea Symanthe enthusiastically relayed the details, which I have copied and pasted from the module below (for real, they're gross):

Before hibernating, the Feathered Swine pulls most of the feathers from its pale pink skin to make a nest, which decays over the coming weeks and attracts strange mites. 

The mites don’t live long, but where their bites infest the Feathered Swine’s skin with their own parasites, cysts begin to form full of a vibrant green fluid. Each cyst forms a digestive sac full of ever-repopulating microscopic Ensorcelled Whorms, copulating in the green liquid even as it dissolves them, feeding the Feathered Swine while it sleeps. 

The Feathered Swine sleeps with its head retracted into the plump folds of its fatty flesh on a bed of rotting feathers.

The proper method for extraction is to slice through the subcutaneous fat under the cyst, and tie off the feeding tubes connected to it before severing them. Never take more than half of the cysts, or the Feathered Swine might die of starvation.

    Symanthe told the Company that the Ensorcelled Whorms were of great value to the vermomancers, and she would happily pay them 1,000cp for each Whorm Cyst that they were able to recover. Thus bringing 7 or 8 of them could easily wipe out their debt. Her hooded and chained associate Jreengus provided the tools necessary to perform the extraction along with a dose of a powerful sedative.

    The Company was quite amenable to the opportunity and took the job. Symanthe provided a map to the Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine, a cave at the foot of a mountain on the edge of the Yellow Lands. They set off northeast towards the rising desert sun.

TRAVEL

    On the way the party resolved to pass by Murkvey's Rock and recover the opulent crown that Kestrel had stashed there many, many moons ago... though the best laid plans of mice and men and etc.

    As they rode on their bikes with their iron mule Mischief in tow they passed by the scorched wreckage of a wagon. Combing through the hot ashes and glassed sand Ottavi uncovered a single fingernail-sized piece of occulith (magic crystal gemstone).

    After several more hours of travel they encountered a group of strange men clad in heavy black armor piling into a massive strange mosquito-helicopter machine whose mirrored wings beat the air mercilessly. Around them stretched more scorched wreckage. One of the soldiers called out to the approaching Company that there were "slim pickings left for you vultures, after Green Hive has been through with them." The Company sized them up and considered laying waste to them but noting their superior numbers and armament they let them go on their way, the strange machine taking flight to the southeast.

Ornithopter from Vaults of Vaarn

MURKVEY'S ROCK

    The party rolled into Murkvey's Rock in the afternoon and noted a scent of cooked spiced meat on the wind, like barbeque. As they approached a familiar hoarse drawl called out. "Kestrel, you ol' kid of a gun. Is that you?"

    Murkvey and his men seemed to be in bad shape. He spoke with a rasp and had a corpse's pallor, glassy eyes, jagged crystal protrusions erupting from his flesh. In conversation he drawled and repeated himself and lost the thread regularly. Despite his condition he warmly welcomed the Company to join for supper in their "base of operations" -- bits of shattered wooden furniture half-covered by a tent flap, the "supper" a whole man that one of his associates was roasting on a spit over an open flame, "some goatherd who went stickin' his nose where it don't belong."

    Murkvey had feared the worst after the Company had left them behind without handing over the Orb of the King and were shortly followed by intrusions led by Adipose Mab, but they assured him they had no connections to Mab and had returned to bring him the Orb once and for all, which he greatly appreciated. 

    He told them they had bravely fought off Mab's expeditions but were driven out of the tomb by an onslaught of what Murkvey called "mirror men" - horrible creatures woven of glass that attacked with greater and greater numbers following the Company's departure. In response Murkvey and his men collapsed the tomb's entrance, through which the Company had previously conducted their delves on behalf of Adipose Mab, but that there was another way in he would happily show them to. The Company obliged.

THE DELVE

Map from Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier

    The Company picked their way down a twisting crystal tunnel and found themselves in a chamber covered in feathers and stinking of animal. In one corner sat a pile of tar-soaked broken bones. Kestrel took a fragment of one. They found that the southern door was stuck, and Ottavi bashed it down with their greatmace, causing a ruckus that echoed throughout the silent Crystal Tomb, and incurring Ottavi a point of Exhaustion.

    On the other side stood a hall with various niches in its walls. In one stood a massive silver statue with its upraised hand hacked off. In another rested two coffins made of Tomb Crystal. On closer inspection the Company found that each coffin was wrapped about with a loop of silver, like a ribbon on a present. Despite copious joking about "this being the Dragon's Dogma coffin with the guy in it that gets you," Ottavi proceeded to remove the silver. Immediately a mummified figure burst through the coffin's lid, sending toxic Tomb Crystal dust everywhere. It grabbed Ottavi by the forearm with its cold cold hands and a strange light seeped into Ottavi's eyes.

    Springing into action Kestrel and Gemini struck at the creature, Kestrel with a gout of flame from their new sword-hand-cannon and Gemini with a runed emerald spear, both of which made contact with the strangely phantasmal creature. 

    Under the revenant's curse, Ottavi was filled with the inclination that Kestrel and Gemini had taken it their to kill it and steal its treasures, and that it would be best to do it to them first. It first whiffed dramatically but then struck a mighty blow against Gemini, shortly after which the creature was dispatched and the compulsion dispelled. 

    Licking their wounds and plotting their way forward to recover the King's Crown -- and perhaps the Orb of the King Itself ?? -- we left behind the Company as the session concluded.

The Halls of Arden Vul - First Session Report

 Yesterday I had the pleasure of playing in the first session of Tara's new in-person open-table old-school D&D game. I met Tara when she ran a B/X campaign of the original 1979 Keep on the Borderlands last year, which I was originally interested in as a weird long-form historical/academic LARPing exercise after spending way too much time reading OSR blogs on my phone at work. 

    Ultimately though I was impressed by the way she breathed life into the module by layering on her own evocative aesthetics, sense of character, complex histories, and intriguing secrets -- so when I saw she was taking on the 1,100-page megadungeon behemoth for her next campaign I was stoked to grab a seat at the table.

    I'm posting my log of the session here, which can hopefully be useful as a resource to future delvers... Delve on! I rolled up a human cleric named Ressona, an adherent of the new hotness Solarism, which I'll quote Tara's description of given the detail of religious society in the game:

   Solarism: This monotheistic religion, founded by the Ithruin philosopher Julian the Bronze, worships the Sun as the creator of the world and the sole God. Lady Alexia Basileos of Ra’ankh provides ample patronage to support its growth in Ithruin, and most devotees are easily convinced that the scorching midday sun of the desert is a natural candidate for worship. Solarites maintain a veneration of some pagan deities, but as human sages and saints, rather than gods.

    In the campaign Arden Vul is an ancient lost city of the current Archontian empire that's undergoing recolonization. Ressona is a fresh convert who's traveled to the lands of Arden Vul to loot and deface its priceless artifacts spread the good word of the one true god. 

THE RECAP: 25th of FEBRUARY, YEAR 2023 AEP

THE CITY OF RA'ANKH

     As the Most Literate among our Number I have taken it upon myself to Chronicle our company's exploits. Our boat arrived at the city of Ra'ankh and my compatriots gained the lay of the land. A scholar among our number informed us that this land was laid to waste in a civil war between wizards 300 years ago, in which the conservative faction prevailed; it was subsequently abandoned but was now being resettled by order of the holy Emperor.

     I made way for the immaculate Solar Temple in the city's holy quarter and made contact with a local priest, Mataph. He informed me that the Lady Alexia sought to establish a new Solarite chapel within Arden Vul, which I vowed to accomplish.

    Afterwards we met a strange man who forsaw our passage into a pyramid(!) in an invisible crystal ball. He told us something cryptic about the importance of traveling into the pyramid on south nort-facing stairs. He also sought whitecap cloudcap mushrooms. 

    My companions held audience with a mayoral figure in a nearby villa (Eusebia?) who asked us to locate Samantha the Red, an esteemed bodyguard of some sort who had gone missing several weeks ago.

    We regrouped at a tavern, the Centurion's Truncheon, and I heard tell of the following strange tales:

        > The Halls were built by toad men?

        > Somewhere in the ancient city is a gladiator pit, which has seen steady use throughout the centuries, despite reports of being abandoned (so said a one-armed man, who claimed he lost the other in said pit)

        > Something about a Lady (perhaps Lady Alexia) seeking evidence to unseat her brother, who might have been the Mayor?

        > PYRAMID!!! Atop the cliffs to the north! 

        > There were many passages into the Halls on the northern cliff face, but none were safe to traverse due to fell creatures known as Ghouls. I have taken it upon myself to Reason with these Ghouls and show them the errors of their ways.

        > There was an establishment ran by one Estelle past the northern side of the pyramid where safe lodging could be found.

        

        We passed the remainder of the evening in the Truncheon and set out for the ruins at first light.

THE ASCENT

    We walked north along the road to where it ascended the cliffs. Two massive statues of the historic warrior Arden and her sorceror-comrade Vul were set into the 1,500ft cliff face on either side of the ascending zigzagging road, next to a massive waterfall. A dwarf among our number noted something unusual about the construction of Arden's hand.

    At the base of the falls sat the ruins of an ancient tower. Buried under a pile of rubble in a corner of the structure we located a Cellar Door. Upon opening said door we were greeted by a frightful phantasmal figure who called out for one "Neaimah," who it claimed was "taken by a red priest". We closed the door, reburied it, and moved on, after providing ample Spiritual Comfort to the poor afflicted Phantasm and promising the swift return of its loved one.

    Many strange and dark passageways into the caves among the cliffs were found as we ascended. In one hidden passageway after the path's third switchback we dipped inside, so that I might Shine my Lantern upon those Forgotten Places, but finding nothing but the scratchings of vermin we returned to the road and continued our ascent. 

    Our dwarf also noticed another concealed passage behind the waterfall roughly at Arden's shoulder, but it was ruled too difficult to reach, and we continued upward. 

    

THE OBELISK

    Once we reached the top of the cliffs we passed beneath the city's gates and its land stretched before us. Ruins stretched in the shadow of the Marble Pyramid including a four-story building and a Collapsed Villa. 

    Along the road loomed a Massive Obelisk which I stood transfixed by for quite some time. Its surface was decorated with reptilian creatures (toad men?), a surfeit of pagan deities, and culminated in the symbol of the Sun at its apex. It was covered in an ancient transcription which our scholar translated: "THE BEACON SHALL BE REVEALED TO THOSE WHO BRING MIDDAY LIFE TO THE SUN, THE MOON, AND THE STARS". Clearly an object that Proved the Solarism of the Ancients.

    In a moment of deep contemplation I saw a holy light reflecting from a symbol atop the obelisk. It seemed an ankh-like symbol had been removed and the depression in which it once sat shone unnaturally--certainly a sign, a Divine Message. It seemed the monument had been defaced -- I vowed to recover the sacred ankh and return it to its rightful place.

THE INN

    We passed north through the ruined land, circumvented the pyramid, and found the rumored establishment, an inn beyond the city wall decorated with a looted depiction of Arden's head, part of a very modest settlement. We spoke with its proprietor Kronos and he was most agreeable. We learned that the top of the pyramid was the entryway into the Halls.

    Having observed that the entryway atop the pyramid was Tragically Roofed despite wonderful Proximity to the Sun I inquired with Kronos about the conscription of masons and daylaborers toward the efforts of removing it to better serve as a chapel for Solarites. He agreed to post an advertisement in his establishment detailing my request.

THE PYRAMID

    With some daylight remaining we decided to return to the Pyramid and ascend the steps to its peak, where apparently the Gateway to the Fabled Halls could be found. Upon rising we met a statue of ibis-headed Thoth presiding over a decorative panel in the ground. My companions rotated his articulated limbs and found in doing so different parts of the panel slid inward, revealing two separate downward staircases into the bowels of the pyramid, one heading north, one heading south. Recalling the strange sage's advice we took the south north-heading staircase.

    The stairs continued down for some time. We passed through a strange unnaturally-lit chamber and continued further downward. Eventually we came to a large room with myriad exits which I have dubbed The Crossroads.

    

A NEW ASSOCIATE

    A dead man slumped against the western wall -- ghastly. Statues and murals of Thoth dominated the room. My associates discovered that this statue's arms were also articulated and began to rotate them when we were accosted by a group of halflings hobbits brandishing weaponry and claiming we lacked the proper licensure to traverse the area. We nearly came to Wretched Violence but agreed to meet with their leader to arrange the proper paperwork.

    Upon being taken at swordpoint to their leader, one Plumthorn, who made his office from a chamber just east of the Crossroads, all were surprised to discover that this Plumthorn and one of our wizardly associates were in fact extremely good friends from back in college. Plumthorn called off his men and agreed to sign a License certifying our company's rights to traverse the area unbothered free of charge, which I have enclosed along with this Holy Chronicle for the Good Use of my Companions. Plumthorn also gave us information about the situation within the Halls:

    > A group of beastmen resides to the south, who Plumthorn called "Fucking Crazy". Their leader is called Demo.

    > Apparently the level below this one is dominated by a group known as the Cult of Sett, who seemed to Strike Fear into the Heart of good Plumthorn.

SIGNING OFF

  With our business concluded I pronounced myself exhausted and promptly left my companions to their affairs in the Halls. I have returned to Kronos' Establishment where I pen this Chronicle, and where I will reside in peace to Meditate upon the Splendid Obelisk and the many mysteries of this land.